Changing Course: Navigating Life after Fifty - Softcover

William A. Sadler Ph.D.; James H. Krefft Ph.D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0979351057 ISBN 13: 9780979351051

Publisher: The Center for Third Age Leadership Press, 2008

Synopsis

Changing Course is a how-to book for people who want to change the aging game. It is a practical book that provides a new way to think about and experience life after fifty. Changing Coursedemonstrates that people over fifty can redefine aging and retirement by building a different kind of portfolio, a Third Age Life Portfolio.

When it comes to aging, the future is not what it used to be. An array of new possibilities for people over fifty provides options previous generations simply did not have.

Historically, D words have defined becoming older: difficulty, disengagement, decline, degeneration, and disease. But recent research has been showing how people can set new directions with R words: renewal, reinvention, regeneration, rejuvenation, and redirection.

In Changing Course: Navigating Life After Fifty, William A. Sadler and James H. Krefft present path-breaking discoveries from over twenty years research. With life stories and lessons, they show readers how they too can take charge of their lives to redefine both aging and retirement.

This researched-based book follows the pioneering work of Bill Sadler: The Third Age: Six Principles of Growth and Renewal After Forty (Perseus, 2001).

Research has shown that people with a positive self-identity live an average of seven years longer than those with a negative self-image. People over fifty can reinvent themselves in a positive way by enlarging their life portfolios and embarking on Third Age Careers. People can thus recast retirement as an age of renewal and growth, not deterioration and decline.

Changing Course illustrates the principles for second growth and provides how-to lessons readers can use to change course. Readers can learn how to:

- Make life after fifty the most fulfilling years yet;

- Replace negative stereotypes of aging with positive images;

- Create a positive third age identity that leads to the person you want to become; and,

- Redefine success in terms of what you find personally fulfilling.

Changing Course is not a financial-planning title. Rather, the book addresses people who want to leave their brand on everything they've touched. Many financial-planning guides, especially those pitched to Baby Boomers, miss the point: people are by and large not mainly interested in figuring out how much money they need to retire. They want to figure out how to continue to do their own thing.

What good is it to know to the penny what financial resources you will need to retire if you have not thought through how you are going to spend your life after fifty?

Changing Course is a self-help book for people who want to create a different, better second half of life. Based on twenty years of research tracking innovative individuals, the book provides a positive scenario of new opportunities, as well as challenges that emerge at this time of life.

As part of an emerging international movement that is redefining aging, Changing Course focuses on the Third Age, a long middle period resulting from a longevity revolution that has added an average of thirty years to the life course.

The book shows how people can continue to experience second growth, renewal, and fulfillment into their sixties and seventies. Many books on the second half of life focus only on vital aging in the fourth age (late seventies and beyond).

The bottom-line message of Changing Course: Instead of winding down after fifty, here is how you can change course.

About this title

About the Author:

William A. Sadler, Ph.D., has been a professor, senior administrator, author, consultant, community leader, and popular speaker. In a long academic career since receiving his doctorate from Harvard, Bill has authored five books. His last, The Third Age: Six Principles of Growth and Renewal after Forty, led to the formation of The Center for Third Age Leadership, an organization that focuses on maximizing the talents and contributions of people over fifty. Translated into several languages, in 2006 The Third Age was featured as book of the week by the Korean Broadcast System. For nearly twenty years Bill has been professor of sociology and business at Holy Names University, where he still teaches MBA leadership courses. He and his wife Sallie reside half the year in Oakland, CA and the other half on the Maine coast.

James H. Krefft, Ph.D., is president of The Center for Third Age Leadership. He works as a writer, consultant, and executive coach. In his second age Jim plied careers as a university instructor, Army officer, technical editor, Human Resources executive, and management consultant. The eldest of ten and a native of New Orleans, he charged into his third age at forty-two when he left a major corporation. In addition to coauthoring Changing Course, he has written or collaborated on two other books and a screenplay since turning fifty-five, including, along with Stephen M. Dent, Powerhouse Partners: A Blueprint for Building Organizational Culture for Breakaway Results. Jim has a BA in philosophy and an MA and doctorate in English literature. He and his wife Lynn and their two children Michelle and Jim live in Colorado.

Review:

Changing Course: Navigating Life after Fifty

Reviewer: Alan G. Greig, The Third Age Coach, Queensland, Australia

Changing Course is a most timely contribution to a better way ahead in our third age. It asks what does better look like? How can we achieve it? And then shows what better looks like and how to achieve this better way ahead.

Changing Course discusses an opportunity that presents itself for the first time in human history. It examines not only increased life expectancy but also positive alternatives in aging by tracking people over a twenty year period who have creatively redesigned their lives after fifty, a time when many people unfortunately anticipate traditional stereotypes of aging, instead of a contemporary viewpoint and the contribution that coaching provided as an external perspective that can be provided by a skilled coach.

The pivotal discovery in their research was that after fifty we have creative potential that enables us to direct and shape out lives to experience more meaning, enjoyment, purpose, vitality and fulfilment than we anticipated as we crossed the threshold into our third age.

The authors ask readers, Do you think people are genetically programmed to begin degenerating into the fifth and sixth decades of life? Are people over the hill after turning 50?

To the contrary they provide several examples of individuals, whose stories are told, and who initiated a growth process in a positive direction that postponed and transformed aging with the objective of designing a productive and fulfilling third age.

Changing Course offers specific steps for third agers in pre-tirement to prepare to change course, including the five major tasks of third age planning. It also provides seventeen lessons from third agers who positively engaged their approach to their third age. These lessons primarily concerned remaining engaged by either transforming their personal identities or remaining in the work force into their sixties and seventies.

Changing Course shows readers how to make their fifties and beyond into their most fulfilling time in life. I commend Changing Course to anyone interested in properly preparing for a happy, contented, and fulfilling third age.

Alan Greig is a professional coach specialising in preparing for the third age. He chairs the International Coach Federation (ICF) Third Age Special Interest Group. You can e-mail Alan at agreig@gil.com.au.

--Alan Greig, Queensland, Australia

Changing Course: Navigating Life after Fifty

Reviewer: Bill Shirley, Executive Leadership Coach, Carbondale, Colorado

Changing Course is about creatively designing your life in your middle years. The book is a necessary and valuable contribution to meeting the challenge of a dramatic expansion in life expectancy.

The purpose of the book is to provide guidance in preparing for your third age middle years as mindfully as you prepared for your second age productive years. Because of extended longevity we can expect to spend more time retiring than we did working.

The Boomer generation is now faced with challenges never before faced by the general population in any era in human history: how do you create a life with meaning, purpose, and significance over thirty (or more) years without gainful employment?

Traditionally, retirement preparation has focused on financial aspects so the retiree could be busy being idle. The challenge is daunting: boredom and the feeling of useless ness are life-threatening conditions.

Changing Course is a full frontal assault on retirement-as-leisure, an obsolete, life-threatening concept that should have been retired from our society twenty years ago. Because we may have to live more --The LLI REview, Volume 2, Fall 2007

About this edition

• Publisher: The Center for Third Age Leadership Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0979351057
• ISBN 13: 9780979351051
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 292